Better to Eat You (6 page)

“Oh, Sarah, not that again,” Malvina said in a soft wail that was sorry and disgusted, and bored with her, too.

The garden was growing dark but light fell on the flowers that curtained the cliff and on David's face. He was not smiling. He was looking down at her rather intently. “I really don't think you must let this thing get you down,” he said. “Let's be sensible. After all, we know things don't just happen.” His eyes held hers. “Now, do they?” He took her hand.

Sarah said helplessly, “I'll try …”

“Then, I'll see you on Monday.”

“We'll look forward …” said Malvina charmingly. She went to unlock the gate and David took her hand to say goodbye. He walked away toward a smart red car.

Sarah stood at the top of the stairs and even in her strange state, part a quenchless feeling of joyous excitement, and part dismay, she thought to herself, Why, that's not his car.

But Malvina turned and began to come up and Sarah turned to run away. That first day she had come here and found Grandfather, she had felt easy and at home after some long terrible weeks. Until Malvina had come, storming and scolding, and making it clear that Sarah might have killed the dear old man with such a shock. Malvina had even discharged the couple … the Neppers … because Mrs. Nepper, in all kindness, had let her in. Sarah had never thought it was fair, never quite liked Malvina Lupino. Never trusted her temper.

She felt Edgar take hold of her shoulders and give her a little push. “Go, get dressed,” he said. “This hasn't got anything to do with you. If
Malvina
wants him here,” said Edgar bitterly, “he'll come.”

Sarah began to hurry across the garden. She looked back. Edgar was looking thunderous. Malvina was smiling her wide frank smile and her eyes were lifted, wide and innocent, to his scrutiny.

Sarah, trying to banish misgivings and forebodings, trying to be sensible, could not banish the one deep joyous cry. It has to do with me. I will be working by his side.

A few miles away, the other side of the settlement, David sat on the floor beside Consuelo's fire, eating his supper quickly off a divided plate. “So you didn't mention me at all?” she mused.

“Thought I'd better not. After, Consuelo, you weren't let in. Besides, I want you working in the dark. You are my secret service.”

“I'm a genius at it, too,” said Consuelo smugly. “Never knew my own resources. For instance, I can tell you a lot about Edgar Perrott.”

“Pray do,” said David with his mouth full.

Consuelo, who was supping from a tray, put her fork down. “He is some distant connection of Fox's. He hails from Fresno. I got on the phone. Seems this Edgar got into a jam. He either did, or was only suspected of doing, what no ethical doctor would do. And while he got off with a verdict of ‘not proven,' his practice fell out from under him. So Edgar was down and out and very low, some four or five years ago, when he approached the Fox. Now, I imagine he is up there for two reasons. One, I think he's lazy and Fox keeps him. Two, his reputation has that spot on it.”

“Three,” said David, “he is wild for Malvina and as green-eyed as they come.”

“Imagine!” sighed Consuelo. “And is Malvina wild for him?”

David cast her a worried glance. “What about the money? Did you find out anything?”

“Sure. I found out that if you are brash enough you can intimidate respectable people into telling you a heck of a lot more than they should. I pumped young Gordon. Fox is in the chips, all right. Willed it, share and share alike, to those girls.”

“Don't tell me. Let me tell you,” groaned David. “When one girls dies without an heir …”

“Wrong!” said Consuelo. “Survivor does
not
take all. Fox is too smart to set up anything like that.”

“Then I can't see …”

“Neither can I. And there's this, too, Davey. Sarah gets a modest allowance, right now, but Malvina gets a good-sized amount on the excuse that she is Fox's right-hand woman and earns it. Looks as if Malvina has no money motive whatsoever but to count her blessings. And look at their attitude. You say they seem to worry about Sarah, say they seem to want to help her, ask you right in there just to give Sarah a job and keep her happy. Sounds to me,” said Consuelo dejectedly, “as if we are fresh out of villains. Edgar may not always have been the most upright soul in the world, but what on earth motive would he have to harass the girl? Malvina, who rattled around with some pretty scummy people when she was young, may or may not be a reformed character, but she is sitting pretty. As for Fox, he seems to have been the noble benefactor all around.”

David's hand was massaging the back of his neck. “Well, I dunno,” said he.

“You don't!” cried Consuelo with delight. “Tell me.”

“One little thing …”

“Go on. Go on.”

“Listen carefully while I quote.”

“I'm falling out of my chair listening, you great goop.”

“When I put it to Fox that I wanted Sarah to work for me, this is what he said.” David began to mimic the old man's voice. “‘I do appreciate your interest and your courage, too, Mr. Wakeley. You are not frightened? The accident doesn't …'” David stopped and looked up at her. “Right there, Malvina breaks in and says quickly, ‘Of course Sarah's little accidents don't frighten Mr. Wakeley, Grandfather. Mr. Wakeley is a reasonable man.' So then Fox says, ‘Perhaps you would be very good for our poor Sarah. Yes. Yes, I do think so.'”

David's mimicking voice ceased.

“Accident …” said Consuelo thoughtfully.

“
The
accident. Not plural.”

“What?”

“Now, Consuelo, I have heard many people say ‘He don't' incorrectly. But I've never heard one say “They doesn't.' Fox was talking about
one
accident. And what accident? Mine. I'm certain that Fox knows about my car.”

Consuelo felt a goose go over her grave.

“How does he know? I didn't tell anyone, especially not Malvina. I think there must have been some slip. He
thought
I had told Malvina.”

“And she tried to cover up that slip!” Consuelo's soft old face looked as ferocious as possible.

“And therefore Malvina also knows. And moreover, the old man let her cover and he went along with that. And if they
do
know about my car and
don't
speak of it to me, then there sure is something devious and dishonest going on.”

Consuelo said uneasily in a moment, “Do you think you'd better go and stay there? Possibly it's a nest of snakes, Davey.”

“That's why I jumped at it,” David said. “One thing worries me. I'm on a false basis with Sarah. Couldn't speak to her aside, you know. There wasn't a chance. I'll have to make one. She doesn't realize why I'll be there.”

“Davey, you'll get no work done.”

“I don't expect to. Don't plan to try.”

“They may try … to fix another piece of bad luck up for you.”

“How I hope they do!” he said. “I can hardly wait.”

Chapter 5

The Monday was one of those glorious days when the whole world looked freshly painted in the crystal air. For once, the ocean was properly aquamarine. The crisp ruffles of surf, whiter than white. The sky as blue as a back-drop.

The red car flashed up the road at ten exactly. David walked into a burst of welcome. Gust Monteeth, a bent and durable-looking man, respectfully carried his bags into the guest house, which stood apart, backed up against the bluff at the land side of the garden. Edgar was there, like a sub-host, showing him his half of the cottage. Then he was introduced to Mrs. Monteeth, elderly and shapeless, with soft flabby cheeks, a flying eye, and upright but absent-minded air. Moon was summoned from the kitchen, an ageless Chinaman who uttered a sequence of syllables that were gibberish to David's ear. His manner conveyed welcome. Finally Fox himself came out into the garden and chirruped and twinkled at him.

Malvina, mistress of all these ceremonies, looking rather regal in a white cotton sun-dress that might have been a ball gown, now led him to the studio.

And there waiting, in a sedate blue cotton waist and skirt, looking very small and tense and determined, was Sarah Shepherd.

David took over. He sent Gust to carry up his books and boxes.

The garage building began from a lower level than the garden so that the studio could be entered without climbing either up or down. One passed first through a cluttered anteroom where Gust kept garden tools on one side and his saw and hammers, paint pots and plumbing aids on the other. The studio itself took up two thirds of the space of this second story and looked out upon the road, the cove, and of course the ever-present sea. There was here a big desk, a table for Sarah, many shelves, some cushioned window benches, a chair or two, and a couch against the partition. There began a great unpacking.

David took notebooks and papers from his boxes. He had along an early draft of his first three chapters and, for the rest, he had snatched some old stuff. Now he directed Sarah firmly because he soon saw that this helped her. Occupied with classifying in her own mind the papers as he arranged them, trying to understand his system, she forgot to be frightened. David, meanwhile, kept up a running conversation with Malvina, who had sat down on one of the window benches and remained as if she were too fascinated to move.

She listened, but her interest was policy, her questions betrayed the poverty of her outlook. David could feel the little girl's swift understanding running ahead of the heavy work it was to expound upon the history of California, as he saw it, to Malvina Lupino. The big girl was all pose, all polish, all this curious, fresh and yet reticent personality of hers. David began to suspect she was wearing a mask over nothing, that the secret of Malvina was a certain numbness and stupidity.

But Sarah was as quick as his own hand.

Putting books on shelves, Sarah must have caught a glimpse through the window of the red presence on the parking apron. “Such a beautiful new car!” She spoke impulsively. And again David noticed the sheen and the sparkle that fell away when she wasn't solemn or frightened.

“Pretty flashy for a college professor,” he said casually and turned to catch Malvina's expression.

She had none. She offered him her blinkless gaze. “I hope the salt air won't be too bad for it,” Malvina purred. “We can't offer you garage space unless we share off. Sarah's little Chevy stands out, as it is. There's Grandfather's Cadillac, and Edgar's Dodge, and my convertible. Even so, we haven't enough cars. Moon, going to market today, had to borrow mine.”

“It's a fantastic world,” David said, shaking his head, “where nobody walks. Here's what I was looking for, Miss Lupino.”

“Malvina,” she corrected, lips parted.

“Now that is a direct quotation from the Spanish …”

Malvina looked at the page and blinked.

“My handwriting,” groaned David, “I know. It's terrible. Sarah?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We may as well know the worst. Can
you
read my handwriting?”

“Of course I can.” He saw the flash of emotion cross her face. She took the paper and read off fluently what he had written on it.

“You can. Well, good. That will save work.” He twitched the paper out of her hand and went on talking to Malvina.

But he remembered and realized he had omitted to consider a thing he had once divined. This girl … Now he remembered the two betraying words she had said to him in that cafeteria. “
Not you,
” she had said. This girl—he groaned to himself, feeling sorry—was fond of him. David was used to it in all those young students. He wished it were not so of Sarah. This was a factor he wished he did not have to deal with. He was sorry.

When Edgar put his head in and announced that lunch was ready in the garden, Malvina professed to be surprised. “Where has the morning gone? We have been spellbound!”

“Heard the lecture myself,” said Edgar dryly. “Down in my lab. It came very loud and clear right through the floor.”

David passed his hand over his hair. “Look here, am I going to disturb you? I'll have to be doing a lot of dictation and the typewriting will go on and on.”

“I don't mind. If you don't,” Edgar said. He had a small mouth under a long upper lip. When he tried to clamp his mouth sourly it merely looked childish. “Lunch,” he repeated. The small eyes were fixed upon Malvina.

As they left the studio, Edgar pointed out the gap in the wall between garage and kitchen wing where a flight of steps went down to his own little cubby-hole built against the lower story of the garage proper. Edgar explained that he fooled around in there intermittently. He seemed vague about it. They passed Moon's ridiculous little kitchen garden. They came to the round table set under the carob tree.

David looked around. “Miss Lupino … Malvina … this will not do. Please, after today, could Sarah and I have a sandwich or something in the studio? I'll never get any work done otherwise.”

“No need to be social that I can see,” said Edgar gloomily.

“After today,” Malvina's soft promise went to David, or Edgar, or both … there was no telling.

David felt some relief when Malvina excused herself after lunch. Fox had not appeared He was somewhere within and apart.

Edgar, however, almost as if he had been instructed, did not leave them until they came to the steps that went down. Then, still with that air of obedience, he swung off to go to his lab again. David bit his lip and reflected. So, Edgar could hear through the floor, could he? David was trying to phrase something to say to her, quickly, as they went through the toolroom, when Sarah turned to him.

“I hope, I pray, that all of you are right, and that I am wrong to be so jittery. After all that's already happened, I can't help thinking of it.”